Stardate 20040323.1220

(On Screen): I see a lot of commentary online now regarding Israel's decision to kill Yassin yesterday. This editorial in The Telegraph is typical in the way that it completely misses the point of the Israeli action.

But, as the Israelis often say to themselves, it is not enough to be right; you have to be clever. There is little that looks clever in yesterday's assassination in Gaza.

It is indeed clever, far more so than Philps realizes. Robert Clayton Dean makes the point that the Palestinians have been using "the peace process" as a way of controlling initiative and tempo in their war against Israel.

A negotiated peace with the Palestinians is not possible now. That has been clear for a long time. There are two reasons why. First, the Palestinians do not negotiate in good faith and are not truly willing to accept anything short of the complete destruction of Israel. Oslo failed because the Palestinians did not fulfil their side of the bargain, and had no intention of doing so.

But even more important than that is the fact that the Palestinians are not united and never have been. There is no actual leader who can negotiate on behalf of the Palestinians who can actually deliver on the promises he makes, even if he was inclined to try.

That's what Israel is about to prove to the world. This is what is really new, and it is extremely clever. That's why Israel is building a wall around the West Bank, and why Israel is going to pull out of Gaza. With Israel gone, the Palestinian areas will erupt in violence as various Palestinian power groups vie with one another for control.

The only thing that could conceivably prevent that would be highly-regarded long-standing Palestinian leaders. If the leaders of various important Palestinian factions are new and relatively unknown, and their grip on power is weak, then not only will different groups contend with one another, but factions within those groups will also contend. And they will contend with guns and bombs, not with words and negotiations.

Once the Palestinians sink into the morass of civil war, inflicting far more casualties on each other than the Israelis ever did, the fiction of the "peace process" will be broken forever, exposed as the manipulative lie it always was. The international focus will cease to be on peace between Israel and the Palestinians, and instead on somehow pacifying the Palestinians themselves. And thus the fiction that the conflict can somehow be settled and Palestinian violence ended if only Israel can be pressured to make enough concessions will also be exposed as a lie.

The right mental model for Palestinian factions is the Chicago crime mobs of the Prohibition era. These are not political movements; they are violent gangs. Wretchard has a series of perceptive articles about the situation, but I think he comes to the wrong conclusion:

By striking at so senior a terrorist target, the Jihadis will be in no mood for negotiations. They themselves will cast away the Peace Process and sheer fury will make them forswear their favorite tactic, the faux hudna -- thereby granting Israel a meeting on the battlefield.

Israel doesn't want to meet Hamas on the battlefield. Israel wants Hamas to meet Islamic Jihad and Fatah on the battlefield. A Palestinian civil war is the ideal outcome for Israel. (Or at least, the best outcome that is actually plausible.)

Wretchard's reader JL offers this thought:

Negotiation with the PA is useless if HAMAS or any other third party can come in and queer the pitch. In helping to decapitate HAMAS, the Israelis have strengthened the PA position as the sole representative of the Palestinians. The PA is the clear winner in the Yassin killing, as one of Arafat's strongest rivals is gone. Also, in putting the Palestinians more firmly under Arafat's control, it strengthens the Israeli position, as it simplifies the hydra-like nature of Palestinian leadership.

But it is not in Israel's interests to strengthen Fatah. (For all intents and purposes, the "Palestinian Authority" is Fatah.) If Hamas was broken and Fatah became the undisputed power among the Palestinians, the situation would be worse for Israel. It would still face an implacable enemy which could only be satisfied by Israel's total destruction, and the Palestinians would still be able to attack Israel while using the fiction of peace negotiations to paralyze Israeli response, because international pressure on Israel to negotiate would be strengthened.

JL ma